Nathan Seidle is the founder and CEO of SparkFun Electronics in Boulder, Colo. Nathan founded SparkFun in 2003 while an undergraduate student studying electrical engineering. Nathan opened SparkFun to fulfill his vision of a company that had clear product photos with multiple views, linked to the datasheet, and had tutorials on every product they sold. In the 10 years since, the company has grown to over 150 employees and is one of the leaders of Open Source technology. In addition to products, SparkFun provides tools, hardware, and educational resources for artists, engineers, prototypers, and hobbyists that want to explore electronic gadgetry.

Alicia Gibb got her start as a technologist from a combination of backgrounds including: informatics and library science, a belief in freedom of information, inspiration from art and design, and a passion for hardware hacking. Alicia has worked for the open source hardware community for the past six years. She currently founded and is the Executive Director of the Open Source Hardware Association, an organization to educate and promote the benefits of building and using open source hardware of all types. She is a member of NYCResistor, co-founder of the Open Hardware Summit, and sits on the advisory boards for Defensive Patent Licenses, The Ada Initiative, and Linux Journal.

What is “Ask an engineer”? From the electronics enthusiast to the professional community – “Ask an Engineer” has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you’re a beginner, or a seasoned engineer – stop in and see what we’re up to! We have demos of projects and products we’re working on, we answer your engineering and electronics questions and we have a trivia question + give away each week. Previous chats can be viewed at http://www.adafruit.com/ask

And don’t forget, 30 minutes before the show we’re doing our weekly show-and-tell. If you are on Google+ and want to join, just add/follow +Adafruit’s page and post a comment so you can be added to the show and tell circle. At 9:30pm ET you will see a link to the hang out. Just keep your mics muted until we call on you and have your project ready.

For those who just want to watch, you’ll be able to watch it live on YouTube LIVE & Ustream – a recorded version will be posted later.

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.